Pretty Good Year
by Azalee
Summary: On the day after his twentieth birthday, Asazuki Kousuke got eye-surgery. - KouxRyou, family FLUFF


This was originally supposed to be about EyesKanone heartbreak by way of mentioning something about Kousuke, in passing.

Until Kousuke high-jacked it, which happened after, oh, maybe five lines. Then he got me to add stuff before and continue afterwards and _he never shuts up_ and I love writing him ramble way too much and ARGH.

I don't think the Eyes/Kanone hints even made it in in the end. Instead we get everyone else, and lots — and I mean LOTS — of Kou/Ryou. And, technically, one OC...

**Warnings :** Post-manga speculation, thus **spoooiiilleeeeers!** for the entire goddamn manga, epilogue included and even a quick reference to _Spiral Alive_, blahblahblah. Main pairing is very much het, for once, but still (spoiler!) half-incestuous.

Also probably full of factual details fail about medical stuff, health care in Japan and a bazillion other things... but it's fluffy. (That totally excuses everything.)

* * *

On the day after his twentieth birthday, Asazuki Kousuke got eye-surgery.

He'd mentioned the idea to Narumi Jr. upon one of his rare visits to the hospital, several months earlier, then immediately shrugged it off because he didn't have the money. Narumi had thought the whole thing simply _brilliant_ and immediately started to blackmail his brother into actually moving his butt and getting money for Kousuke's operation, as a special birthday present from the both of them. (Kousuke still didn't know how to respond to that. On another hand, the youngest Narumi brother was already quite aware that Kousuke couldn't ever thank him enough for everything he'd done for all of them, anyway, and so probably never would verbally thank him at all.)

Kousuke hadn't planned anything special to do on his birthday, he simply stayed home. Ryouko moved all of their weapons into different hiding places that Kousuke hopefully wouldn't think of, and they'd locked all possible exits and agreed to have Rio (back in Japan for the occasion) plant explosives all around the flat, with two activation switches, one for each of them. But that was it. Kousuke refused to go any further than that.

"There isn't going to be any need for more," he'd been insisting ever since she'd first dared to bring up the topic, a month earlier.

The official version was that there was no particular time for their inner time-bomb to go off. And it was true that switches could happen at any time ; it had happened a lot during the first Hunt, and they'd been between five and six years old at the time.

That didn't stop absolutely everyone to dread the moment the Blade Children would turn twenty. So far, the only genetic oddities to make it to that age had been Mizushiro Yaiba himself and Narumi Kiyotaka ; and while there was no guarantee that the Blade Children would follow in their father's footsteps to such an extent, there was nothing yet to indicate that they _wouldn't_.

The Watchers had decided to wait and see and pretended not to have an opinion until then, which only made Kousuke snort. Meanwhile, the Savers still pretended to believe that the switch was nothing more than a stupid rumor, which made Kousuke want to rip their heads off.

On the Hunters' side, the general consensus was that the switch could be triggered to activate at absolutely any time, but if it hadn't by their twentieth birthday, a large hammer would be dropped on the switch anyway. Kousuke could see their point.

The younger Narumi brother, for his part, believed it wouldn't happen at all if they didn't want it to ; and as far as Kousuke was concerned, that was the end of the debate.

"It's gonna be fine. Sheesh, Ryouko, seriously, have a little faith."

The popular trends in her method of answering were the same as usual : calling him an idiot, punching him and/or kissing him.

The day itself was perfectly quiet ; Ryouko's nerves nearly snapped a thousand times, but Kousuke at least looked very relaxed.

Still, he didn't tell her the exact time he'd been born until a good half an hour later.

Rio called at around eleven p.m., shamelessly confessing she couldn't wait any longer. Kousuke called Rutherford an hour later, which corresponded to around three in the morning in Rutherford's current timezone (he was touring in Australia at the time). Kousuke wouldn't have felt guilty about disturbing his beauty sleep even if it had seemed like he'd actually woken up the pianist ; but, as it turned out, he was surprised to find that, judging from the quick response and the sound of Rutherford's voice, he most likely hadn't slept at all that night, which was actually an odd sort of heartwarming. (Also very corny, which was exactly Rutherford's style. Neither of them mentioned it, either, which was _also_ exactly his style.)

So Kousuke got past his twentieth birthday without a hitch and went to get his eye-surgery the next day. When he came back from hospital, he leaned against the doorframe to the kitchen and proceeded to look dashing at Ryouko, complete with a winning smirk and flirty wink.

She barely looked up from the sink to spare him a sideways glance.

"You look weird," she commented curtly, then went back to her dishwashing.

He instantly deflated, scowled slightly, attempted to win back some dignity with a short barking laugh, and retreated to the living-room to enjoy some glasses-less reading.

o

A few minutes later, Ryouko put back the last plate on the drying rack and joined him on the sofa, then she screamed at him and beat him up for the disappearance of her birth control pills.

She would be pregnant by Christmas and, as far as anyone would be concerned, it would be entirely _her _idea, but that's all completely irrelevant.

* * *

Anyway, the fact was, Kousuke got eye-surgery and thus stopped wearing glasses, apart from tacky shades when going out in the sun.

Rio's verdict was pretty much the same as Ryouko's, namely, "Stupid Kousuke-kun doesn't look like stupid Kousuke-kun unless he's wearing glasses !". But he wouldn't let that get to him. He may not look like an intellectual anymore, but at least he didn't have to squint to see Ryouko's face from across a room anymore.

Narumi's response, apart from a smirk at the reminder of the sum he'd made his brother pay, was a blank stare and a deadpan, "Yeah, cool, so what ?". But Kousuke saw the hint of a smile that crept up as he was leaving, and knew Narumi understood.

The _other_ Narumi brother mourned the waste of so much money for such an idiot with a thousand fake tears, accompanied with a moving rant-slash-speech and a few sparkles. His wife's expression didn't even change as she kicked him.

Rutherford's reaction, now, was something else entirely.

Because Rutherford should get the Nobel Prize for _most depressing person in the world._

o_  
_

It was a few weeks before Kousuke got to see it : the end of the pianist's current world tour, because Asazuki Kousuke would be a dead man before Eyes Rutherford let him affect his schedule. Seeing how Kousuke hadn't, in fact, died or gone Terminator on anyone on his twentieth birthday or in the days that had followed, there had been no reason for Rutherford to hurry back to Japan before September. (He'd be there for Rio, of course.)

Kousuke hadn't told him about the surgery. He vaguely hoped to catch Rutherford unexpected, see that rare look of surprise cross his face for a moment before hearing the inevitable straight-faced remark that would most likely be along the lines of "You look ridiculous."

Instead, upon meeting him at the arrival gate, Rutherford just stared at him for half a second before dumping a suitcase in his arms, and never even mentioned the disappearance of the glasses.

But a few days later, Kousuke swung by Rutherford's hotel room only to have the pianist glance up at him for less than a second, then look back down at his music sheet and distractedly call him "Kanone".

Kousuke couldn't get his throat to work out a single word.

Rutherford didn't seem to notice anything strange, didn't even look up as he left almost as soon as he'd arrived.

o

Back home, Kousuke locked himself in the bathroom and peered into the mirror with his new, nice perfect vision.

The thing was that he'd never been the one with any resemblance to the others. Ryouko was the one who looked like Kanone, so much that they probably could've passed as one another when they were kids, before Kanone got his growth spurt and Ryouko got, well, her boobs. Rutherford, on the other hand, no one could've ever guessed that he and Kanone were actually half-brothers, but he shared his paleness of hair with Rio and the shape of his eyes with the Shiranagatani girl. Even Charlotte had looked slightly like him — something in her long oval face, like Rutherford's features except with the shape of Kanone's eyes, something European despite the silky black hair.

But Kousuke ? He'd never looked anything like any of the others, not as far as he'd ever noticed.

Now, however — now that he'd grown into his features and gotten rid of the glasses — he could see it.

Their eyes all got that cat-like look whenever things got serious, being an actual fight or just a threat, even just twisted fun in Rio's case, but that was just the pupils doing something freaky. That didn't mean they all had the same eyes, far from it — Rutherford obviously sprung to mind again.

But he, Asazuki Kousuke, as he realized in his bathroom at the age of twenty years and three weeks old, had Kanone's eyes.

What a nice way to be acknowledged as a family member. Kousuke scowled at his mirror.

"Thanks, Rutherford, you bastard, you're not the only one mourning," he told his brooding reflection. Brooding somewhat camouflaged the resemblance, because even though Kanone had been doing a lot of brooding in his later years and had even looked grim towards the end, they all remembered him best with a cheerful smile.

"Kousuke ? Who the hell you talking to ?" Ryouko called from the living-room. She sounded tense, even if there technically wasn't any reason for her to ever worry anymore, but old habits died hard.

"No one," he yelled back. "It's just Rutherford's an idiot."

"You're only noticing _now_ ?"

Kousuke chuckled. She'd stopped resenting the poor guy quite so much a long time ago, but when it didn't matter she liked to pretend that she still did.

o

"D'you think I look like Kanone ?"

Narumi Jr. didn't even blink, or, for that matter, glance up from the music he was writing. Just one of the disturbing similarities he shared with the other unemotional music geek Kousuke knew. "Why, I'm doing fine, thank you, Asazuki. How about you ?"

"Hello, nice to see you're still not dead, d'you think I look like Kanone ?" Kousuke dutifully amended.

Narumi finally looked at him and studied his face for a bit, a corner of his mouth slowly curling up into a sort of smile.

"Well, you don't quite turn all the ladies' heads the way he did," he confided helpfully.

"Thank you so very much," Kousuke scoffed. "Having brothers who all look like they could be models already did wonders for my self-esteem."

Narumi actually looked amused. "You're welcome. But what's got into you ? Why the sudden concern ?"

Kousuke sighed, pulled up a chair — letting its feet rattle on the floor — next to the window and flopped down on it.

"Just something that slipped Rutherford's tongue, is all," he muttered, averting his eyes. "Bastard keeps making people feel bad without even noticing, that way he doesn't have to care."

Narumi smiled for real then.

"He is quite good at that, isn't he."

"You can say that again," Kousuke grumbled, glaring out the window.

"You know," Narumi continued in a tranquil conversational tone, "if it helps, you do have a bit of a family resemblance with Kanone Hilbert, but actually I think you look more like Hizumi."

Kousuke's eyes snapped back to him and he stared for a full minute before letting his head drop in his hands. Narumi laughed out loud.

"Not helping. _Not helping at all_," Kousuke whined without restraint, being used by now to losing his dignity to the last shreds.

"Anytime," Narumi answered lightly. "It's the eyes, definitely. You've got some look in them, like, impish or something of the sort. Oh, hey, that might be the thing Takamachi likes you for ! I need to call Rutherford, tell him I've finally figured it out, we've been wondering about that for some time now."

"... You just said you discuss me and Ryouko's love life with Rutherford. That was what you said, wasn't it. I didn't hear it wrong, did I."

Narumi gave absolutely no verbal answer, just laid back deep in the cushions that held him upright, and looked very, very smug.

"... I should be so lucky."

Narumi only hummed, faking distraction, and delved back into his music sheets. Kousuke sighed again and returned his attention to the late summer birds flying past the hospital window.

"So now I'm actually gonna be _looking_ the part of the big brother of the family, uh," he muttered to no one in particular.

Narumi said nothing.

"We're gonna have a baby," Kousuke suddenly remembered.

Narumi looked up more quickly than before, looking genuinely shocked for a second before his expression softened into a sort of pleased surprise, and then... just stared at him, in a way that Kousuke could only describe in one way, ridiculous as it sounded - Narumi Ayumu seemed to be _proud_ of him. There was an odd thing that even actually looked like_ affection_ in his warm smile and appreciative gaze, and even _pride_ and _satisfaction,_ as if Kousuke had passed some test much better than Narumi had ever expected him to.

And yet he was sure, somewhere amongst the utter confusion, that Narumi _had_ expected him to pass. Just not to ace it, which apparently he'd done, somehow, and with flying colors too.

"Congratulations," Narumi said, very softly.

There was a beat during which Kousuke tried hard not to flush under the gratifying stare of the Savior of the Blade Children, feeling like graduation day all over again except ten times bigger.

Then :

"Does Takamachi know ?"

Kousuke let his head drop and bump against the window-pane, mortified.

"Nope. She's in denial. She won't admit to herself that she gets why I threw away her pills."

"You didn't."

"I did."

"Well, never fear. It shouldn't last long, then she'll move on to trying to kill you."

"I know."

Narumi grinned.

"Congratulations, Asazuki. Really."

* * *

Rio decided they would celebrate Christmas all together that year, and that it would double as the party for Rutherford's birthday — birthday which went by without the slightest hitch, of course, just like the girls'.

Ryouko announced that they were expecting at said party, just to spite Rutherford ; although he actually seemed weirdly pleased.

In any case, Rio was _definitely_ pleased, judging from the pitch of her squeal alone.

o

The news that Takamachi Ryouko was pregnant shook the world. (Well, close enough.) Firstly, because it broke the hearts of her millions of desperate fangirls all across the world by giving them a definite proof that she was _not _a lesbian ; and secondly, because it meant she would not be able to run in the Summer Olympics of the following year.

However, as time would prove once again, Ryouko had never been one to let anything related to Kousuke hinder her plans, not even if it was growing inside her womb.

She was due beginning of August. Rio arranged to come back to Japan a little earlier and would stay with them until well after the baby had arrived, because evidently Kousuke could not be trusted to take care of a pregnant woman and even less of a baby.

Rutherford said absolutely nothing, but his next tour was planned to finish in early July, making it unusually short for him. Everyone took care not to mention that, though.

o

On the 7th of July, magazines reported worriedly about pregnant running-track star Takamachi Ryouko's emergency premature delivery.

o

Contrary to what was clearly everybody's expectations, Kousuke handled the whole waking in the middle of the night and driving his yelling, kicking girlfriend to hospital thing pretty well, if he did say so himself. As proof of this, even Ryouko, a few days later, would grudgingly admit he hadn't been entirely incapable and useless.

Still, although the whole baby thing had been planned, he had been putting off getting mentally prepared to fatherhood until the last minute ; as it was, he'd been cheated of one month of psychological drilling and of repeatedly thinking "oh-my-God-it's-really-actually-happening-and-Ryouko-hasn't-killed-me-yet".

He was thus, understandably, too shaken to think of calling Rio until well into the afternoon.

But then, when he finally did, he waited until Ryouko was asleep.

For a preemie, their baby was amazingly healthy and strong ; because of course, Yaiba's magical genes couldn't behave like normal ones and Kousuke wasn't even surprised to find that Yaiba-consanguinity apparently made super-babies, instead of giving them all kinds of nasty genetic diseases. Anyway, the nurses had taken him out of the incubator in the morning, when it'd been obvious he didn't need it in the slightest. He was sleeping on his mum's chest at the moment.

Kousuke jiggled the little bundle of joy and trouble free from her loose arms, and quietly sat down in the far corner of the small room with his — their — he and Ryouko's son.

He breathed in and out a few times, as the little thing watched him with a curious face, then he took out his cellphone, rang Rio's number, put the speaker over his child's face and tickled him.

His baby giggled into the phone.

He took the receiver back to his own ear, and on the other end, from the deep Middle-East, came a long silence.

"Rio ?" he finally whispered.

That was when she started _screaming_ in delight.

o

She wanted to know _everything_. Sex, of course, that was a given. Exact time of birth, and size and weight, for some reason (one more of those girl things he'd never understand, apparently), which he couldn't answer of course, which earned him the long-suffering sigh that meant "Kousuke-kun, you are such an idiot, I don't know why we put up with you", which he felt was hardly justified. It was only numbers, after all.

Name, as well, and he did feel a bit uncomfortable that his kid was almost a day old and still didn't have a name, but he and Ryouko had only just started arguing about it a few days earlier. "Arguing", of course, meant that he didn't care in the slightest as long as it didn't sound stupid or anything close to "Kiyotaka", while Ryouko thought he was awful for not caring and kept suggesting ridiculous names just to get a reaction out of him.

Rio, naturally, sided with Ryouko, but at least she agreed on the not-sounding-like-"Kiyotaka" point.

And then she asked just how cute he looked and what color were his eyes and was it true that babies' eyes were blue at birth and had Kousuke been allowed in the labour room and had he felt sick and was anyone crazy enough to let him hold his baby on his own and had Ryouko breast-fed him already, she must have hadn't she, oh God she couldn't believe this was really happening !

Nothing was _happening_, Kousuke patiently tried to explain to her, it _had_ happened and he was a dad now.

That was the point at which she realized that she, incidentally, was now officially an aunt.

That was also the point at which he decided he'd rather like keeping his sense of hearing intact.

o

Only a few minutes after Kousuke had thus _finally _hung up on Rio, in-between her immediate and insistent attempts to call him back, Rutherford managed to place a call.

He'd just read the news in the papers. He didn't say anything, of course, but to Kousuke he sounded pretty pissed to not have been told earlier and in person, and also acidly resentful that the special arrangements he had (definitely not) taken on purpose, so as to be present in time for the happy event, had turned out to be in vain despite his having planned to be in Japan well in advance, because clearly Kousuke could never do anything right. Which meant that to anyone else, he would have just sounded quietly haughty and disinterested.

Kousuke was rude and flippant, and smiling, all through the conversation.

* * *

Less than forty-eight hours after his birth, Asazuki Hikaru was cuddled by his aunty Rio for the first time. Kousuke suspected Rutherford had paid her last-minute flight. The rockstar of the classical music world, for his part, didn't change anything to his schedule, but reportedly boarded a plane to Japan the _minute_ he'd finished the last concert of his tour, just a few days later. The journalists massed outside the hospital couldn't decide whom to harass more, him or Ryouko.

* * *

They pointedly didn't appoint any godparents, which naturally did nothing to prevent Rio from proclaiming herself Hikaru's fairy-godmother.

"More like _pixie_-godmother," Kousuke of course corrected her, and not even recent ascension to the status of father was a good enough reason to stop Rio from kicking him.

Rutherford said nothing on the topic of godfatherhood, but that made no difference whatsoever.

Eyes Rutherford, it turned out, was also the _worst possible uncle in the entire galaxy._

He spoiled Hikaru _rotten_. Kousuke could never keep track of the toys and clothes and everything that just kept popping up into existence in the hospital room, and he got the slightly worrying feeling that in a few years, Hikaru would be running to Rutherford to get candy every time his father refused him because he was going to get cavities.

Kousuke tried not to think that it may have been because his child had his eyes, Ryouko's hair, Rio's smile and Hizumi's charm and air of utter devilish mischief, and that the result gave the overall impression of a mini-Kanone in diapers.

Rutherford definitely was instantly and absolutely _smitten_ with him anyhow.

Which actually came in handy when Ryouko kicked Kousuke's ass out of her hospital room and back to school a few days after she'd given birth. Apparently, she didn't think having a baby was an excuse to skip class, not when he wasn't the one feeding it and he'd been the one to insist about going to university. So Kousuke spent the month of July splitting his time between class just like always, and hospital visits, where he was treated to the sight of his half-siblings discretely but spitefully bickering over who got to hold his son, while the love of his life ignored the nurses' advice to rest and roamed the hallways instead.

He was quite happy in his studies, but still, he couldn't be happier when Ryouko came home, and August and the Summer Holidays finally came around.

By that time, Rio and Rutherford had both quietly and efficiently moved in with them before Kousuke had time to notice.

o

"What," Kousuke started, then he took a pause to rub his eyes, vaguely hoping that when he opened them again Rutherford would be gone. He opened his eyes. Rutherford was still there. Figures. "Are you doing in my kitchen at two in the morning," he finished, too tired to put an inquisitive intonation in his voice. "... In a robe. Housecoat. And in _my_ slippers."

Rutherford calmly took a sip from his mug of tea. "Insomnia. You seem familiar with the issue yourself."

"It's not insomnia when a baby is bawling next to your ear and his mom is kicking you out of bed. What the hell are you doing here ? Don't you have a hotel room ?"

Rutherford raised one elegant eyebrow. Just one. Kousuke thought, not for the first time, that he probably plucked them. "I've spent every night since my arrival here, Asazuki. You should pay more attention to who stays in your own apartment."

Kousuke could feel the headache coming. Of course, Hikaru screaming his head off and Rio's shrill attempt at singing a lullaby in the next room didn't help.

Wait.

"Rio too ?"

Rutherford said nothing, just made his eyebrow come back down and raised the other one. He was just that good.

o

Rutherford in particular could definitely have afforded staying in a hotel for however long he planned. He'd done it before. In fact, it was what he usually did. But Ryouko let it slide because he was a more serious and less clumsy baby-sitter than Rio and Kousuke, meaning she could go back to the stadium to exercise for hours at a time without worrying too much. Kousuke's opinion didn't seem to matter (did it ever ?) but there was also a reason _he_ never brought up the matter again : Rutherford hadn't said a word when Hikaru had thrown up all over his shirt. The guy clearly really, really wanted to be there.

As for Rio, she could stay because somewhere along her traveling she'd learned to make African-style meals that tasted _awesome_ (the trick was simply to not ask what was in it, _ever_). Kousuke was never, ever letting Rutherford cook, though.

* * *

The _next_ time Takamachi Ryouko made the news, she was in every single paper's headlines, all claiming she would be forever remembered in the sporting world for having won gold in her first Olympics only a little over a month after having given birth. And so Kousuke, having not completely ruined Ryouko's life after all, was allowed to keep living.

Which was nice, because somewhere around that time, he'd turned twenty-one.

* * *

The winter holiday that year was even more interesting than usual.

Everybody cheerfully ganged up on Rutherford again to prevent him from pretending it wasn't his birthday and he hadn't gone through his twenty-first year unscathed, for one.

They decided to have a picnic on Kanone's grave, for second. The terrible British weather of course cut that plan short, to nobody's surprise (it _was_ the end of December, after all), but they visited anyway once it was again almost possible to see the sky between the dark gray clouds. Sloshy though it was, Hikaru still seemed really interested in the snow. (Since they were in a graveyard, Ryouko didn't yell at Kousuke for letting him touch it and risk pneumonia and bronchitis and only flying-kicked him into a gravestone.)

And last but not least, they had a fondue for New Year's and Rio dropped even more pieces of bread than Kousuke did.

All in all, it was a pretty good winter holiday. Then again, it had been a pretty good year.


End file.
